Roof Garden Theatre

Two theatres in Albert Square, Brisbane, opened 15 May 1915. Comprised three-level proscenium theatre seating 1800 and Roof Garden Theatre seating 1200. Architect: Henry E. White. Reconstructed as two-level cinema 1927. Architects: Kaberry and Chard. Closed 17 June 1965 and demolished.

In 1914 Henry E. White was reported to be designing 'more theatres than all the other architects in Australasia'. One was the Tivoli Theatre in Brisbane for Hugh D. McIntosh's Rickards Tivoli Theatres Ltd. The exterior was in a style variously referred to as Art Nouveau and Spanish. The interior was in White's 'Louis Seize' style, very similar to Her Majesty's Theatre in Wellington (New Zealand), which he had designed in 1911. The main auditorium, 19.2 metres square, was on three levels, each containing two private boxes within a deep proscenium. The stage was 19.2 metres wide by 11.4 metres deep, with a skimpy fly tower. There was a minuscule vestibule - no foyer - to the street. Above this was the one-level Roof Garden Theatre with a shallow stage – 4.5 metres deep - with no fly tower. The auditorium had a latticed ceiling and wide side-wall shutters that could be raised to expose potted plants and creepers and the subtropical night. 

The Roof Garden Theatre remained largely unaltered when Union Theatres had the main vaudeville theatre reconstructed as a two-level cinema. The stage depth was halved to 4.8 metres, the old proscenium firewall was removed and the two tiers above the stalls were removed and replaced by a circle extending back to the front wall of the building over the circle foyer. Every wall and ceiling surface was decorated in a semi-classical picture-palace style with false window-backed balconies along the side walls, and dropped-dome and chandelier on the ceiling. The exterior remained unchanged until the theatre, bought by the City of Brisbane in 1963, was closed in 1965 and demolished to make way for a city square.